In typical floor care operations, a dedicated floor sweeper is used to remove dry fine and bulky solid debris from the floor. When necessary, a dedicated floor scrubber trails the sweeper to scrub the floor to a shiny finish. As typically happens between the time the sweeper has completed a pass and the arrival of the scrubber, additional debris is deposited on the floor. When the dedicated floor scrubber passes over this later deposited debris, the debris is engaged by and gets caught in the rear squeegee in the scrubber, reducing the performance of the squeegee by causing solution loss and floor streaking. In addressing this problem, combined scrubber sweepers have been developed that are essentially a floor scrubbing machine which is also provided with a limited sweeping capability. These combined machines use the rotating rear cylindrical scrub brush, or brushes, as a sweeping broom which picks up solid debris and directs the debris into a hopper. This arrangement prevents solid debris from becoming trapped in the rear squeegee causing the aforementioned solution loss and streaking on the floor.
In many combined scrubber sweeper machines, the debris hopper is manually removed from the machine, lifted to a raised position, and emptied by hand into a debris dumpster. The substantial weight of wet debris limits the maximum capacity of debris hoppers emptied by hand. In some cases, the debris hopper of the scrubber sweeper machine is in the form of two separate hoppers to facilitate manual lifting and emptying of each hopper. The manual lifting and emptying of a debris hopper is particularly a problem when attempting to empty the debris hopper into a standard high debris dumpster which is typically on the order of sixty (60) inches high.
To provide larger debris hopper capacity for increasing scrubber sweeper machine productivity by increasing the time between the required emptying of the debris hopper, high dump scrubber sweepers have been developed which incorporate powered debris emptying systems. These systems typically have the ability to raise the hopper to a sufficient height for emptying into standard 60″ high debris dumpsters. In these types of combined scrubber sweeper cleaning machines, the aft squeegee operates to retain water between itself and a front squeegee, where it is vacuumed up through a vacuum port. The rear squeegee is typically comprised of rubber and operates as a seal as it is dragged against the floor, tending to wear out and require replacement. This characteristic necessitates frequent inspection, adjustment, maintenance and replacement of the rear rubber squeegee. This presents a problem in existing scrubber sweeper machines as removing and replacing the rear rubber squeegee in a scrubber sweeper mounting structure is quite awkward and time consuming. This presents an efficiency/productivity problem because of the necessity for frequent inspection, adjustment, maintenance and replacement of the rear rubber squeegee.
The present invention addresses the aforementioned problems of the prior art by providing for the powered, independent movement of the scrubber sweeper's debris hopper and the scrubber sweeper's rear squeegee between a lowered operating position and a range of elevated positions to facilitate either emptying of the debris hopper into a debris dumpster as high as 60″ dumpster, or higher, or inspection, adjustment, maintenance and possible removal and replacement of the squeegee.